[Developers] Casting ISBN-10 to ISBN-13

[Brian Karlak]

On Feb 12, 2009, at 4:47 PM, Richard Newman wrote:

>
> I'm simply concerned that I'll paste a 10-digit ISBN into the Freebase
> search field and not find anything, because that literal isn't present
> in the graph. It's feasible to expect *application developers* to do
> ISBN-13 translation (though even they will forget), but not your
> average user.
>
> The ontological point (that this book has a 10-digit ISBN, not a 13-
> digit ISBN, regardless of a mapping between the two defined years
> after the book was published) remains.

Richard --

Your points are all valid.  I find your point that a user might use an  
ISBN-10 in the standard freebase search by and come up lacking  
especially compelling.  Still, I'm not sure it outweighs the extra  
cost and hassle of maintaining two separate property .

At the very least, it sounds like we should rename the /book/ 
book_edition/ISBN property to /book/book_edition/ISBN13, and add clear  
documentation to the property about proper usage.  Our gardening  
scripts could correct any user entry errors by automatically casting  
ISBN-10 to ISBN-13 on a nightly basis.

It sounds like you are very familiar with the particulars of ISBN  
numbers, so let me ask you this -- if we decided now to standardize on  
ISBN-13 but later decided that we also wanted a separate, parallel / 
book/book_edition/ISBN10 property, would it be correct to auto- 
populate the ISBN-10 property where a valid back-mapping from ISBN-13  
existed?

Brian